


i know i've kissed you before, but i didn't do it right

by a-bigail (spacepuck)



Category: Fruits Basket
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Pining, in which kyo is too much of a gentleman to get turned on apparently
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 21:03:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19876051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacepuck/pseuds/a-bigail
Summary: “The heat wake you up?” he asked.“Huh? Oh, no, I just…”She paused. She then shook her head and curled her fingers into his shirt, gentle yet needy, as she let her words die. It was an innocuous touch of her’s, something she did so frequently it was almost second nature for her to do it, and for him to feel it. The muscle memory of her fingers grasping him, her nails just barely grazing his skin through the fabric. The ritual of him shaking his head and smiling at her as goosebumps spread along his arms. His heart somehow growing fonder every single time.And yet this morning, at that touch, he suddenly found himself fighting the urge to step away from her. That warm coil in his chest didn’t disperse as he hoped it would, but rather sunk deeper, down over his ribs and through his stomach. Pooling in ribbons, weighty and relentless. Thick as tar, bittersweet as the darkest molasses.A lump formed in his throat. He tried to swallow it away.Don’t make it weird, he thought to himself. He swept a hand over his hair and swallowed again, with little result. Jesus, the heat must be really…--Kyo and Tohru live in the mountains. Kyo deals with some more complicated feelings towards her.





	i know i've kissed you before, but i didn't do it right

Their new home was quiet. They had left behind their hometown, a city bordering on claustrophobia despite its forest, for the mountains soon after graduation. They left behind the familiarity of busy and well-worn streets for a small town, where the neighbors were warm, the air clear, and the spaces in between still and contemplative.

They settled in their new home quite easily. In a half-year’s time, it was as though they had always been there. 

Sometimes, though, the unknown startled Kyo.

It was early morning. The kitchen was dim, save for the soft light coming through the small window above the sink. Behind the mountain’s tall cedars, sunrise tinged the sky orange and pink — a sign, he remembered, that rain would be on the way. 

He scrubbed at an eye with the heel of his palm. At the sink, he surveyed the few dishes leftover from the previous night. Tohru had been tired after a long week, more so than usual; he had been tired, too, and though she protested, he convinced her to leave the small mess for the morning in exchange for a somewhat early night in. By the time he had crawled into bed beside her, she had already given herself over to sleep. 

(Despite his own exhaustion, he found himself trying to make out her features in the dark for some time. The gentle swoop of her hair falling over her shoulder, her lips parting somewhat as she breathed in deeper, easing into dreams. The dip of her waist, rising and falling slowly, and then slower yet. The shift in her hips as she adjusted her legs. Her small hand curled against her chest like an amulet.)

He turned on the tap of the kitchen sink. The hiss of water rushing through metal, pattering to the dishes below, almost seemed too loud. He thought of Tohru still sleeping soundly down the hall. The noise wouldn’t wake her. Few things did.

Still, he started washing the utensils slowly, careful of the clatter as he placed them on the rack to dry. 

Though it was the weekend, he wondered about stopping by the dojo for a short while after breakfast. There were little maintenance things to take care of, things he hadn’t had the time to address with the past month’s influx of young students. A sort of rowdy bunch that had taken some time just to master the art of sitting still, but despite the test on his patience, he found himself laughing with them more than not. 

_Tohru would like them_ , he thought vaguely. He looked up through the window, scrubbing a plate in lazy circles. Outside, a warbling pecked at the garden. _Would probably watch them with that doofy smile and go on about how cute they are._

He smiled at the thought of her spectating a session. Her schedule didn’t allow for it now, but maybe in the future…

Suddenly, arms snaked around his middle in a loose-limbed hug, and he startled out of his thoughts, only to settle at the feeling of Tohru pressing her forehead against his spine. He felt his heart slow back to normal as her sleepy hum traveled through him, and he released a steadying breath. 

Even now, she managed to sneak up on him.

“You’re up early,” he said, setting the plate on the drying rack. Though they lived alone, he still felt inclined to shift his voice to an almost-whisper so early in the morning. “What’s up?”

As he dried his hands, she remained quiet. He thought little of it until she transitioned her embrace to instead press her palms flush against his stomach. A hand across his navel, the other shy of his ribs. And though he felt something warm coil in his chest at the minute change, feeling a tepid flush creep across the nape of his neck, he said nothing, either. It was at her continued silence that he carefully turned to face her. She lifted her head from him and loosened her hold, ending the unexpected touch.

He looked down at her and took in her curly bedhead, her slightly-skewed summer nightshirt, her cheeks red from the lingering September heat. Strange, though, was the determined flame behind her eye that made her look very much awake in the dim morning light.

Her hands moved to settle gingerly on his sides. He brushed his fingers against her cheek, indulging in his brief worry that she was feverish, but found it to be nothing. 

“The heat wake you up?” he asked. 

“Huh? Oh, no, I just…”

She paused. She then shook her head and curled her fingers into his shirt, gentle yet needy, as she let her words die. It was an innocuous touch of her’s, something she did so frequently it was almost second nature for her to do it, and for him to feel it. The muscle memory of her fingers grasping him, her nails just barely grazing his skin through the fabric. The ritual of him shaking his head and smiling at her as goosebumps spread along his arms. His heart somehow growing fonder every single time. 

And yet this morning, at that touch, he suddenly found himself fighting the urge to step away from her. That warm coil in his chest didn’t disperse as he hoped it would, but rather sunk deeper, down over his ribs and through his stomach. Pooling in ribbons, weighty and relentless. Thick as tar, bittersweet as the darkest molasses. 

A lump formed in his throat. He tried to swallow it away.

 _Don’t make it weird,_ he thought to himself. He swept a hand over his hair and swallowed again, with little result. _Jesus, the heat must be really…_

Tohru seemed none the wiser. Her look softened, as though returning from her thoughts, and she smiled at him. 

“It’s going to be another hot one today, isn’t it?” she asked.

“What?” He stared at her, registering her question, before mumbling an answer. “Oh, uh. Yeah.” 

He took a moment, then, to look over his shoulder to survey the pink skies, now intensified behind the trees. To look away from her and collect himself, to make the strange weight in his gut settle. 

Before him, the warbler landed on their windowsill. It cocked its head, and flew away again.

The feeling didn’t leave.

“Actually,” he said, attempting to bring his thoughts back to the moment, “I think we’re gonna get some rain later. Look.” 

He shifted slightly to give her view of the sunrise, allowing himself some more distance from her touch. When she dropped her hand from him, though, she did so reluctantly, and the moment it left him, he wanted it to return. While she kept one hand on him, with her fingers still gently curled into his shirt, it, too, slowly began to weaken its hold. 

When she made a questioning noise, he said,

“Sky’s all pink. It was something Shishou taught me when I was a kid… you know, when I really couldn’t deal with the rain. So at least I knew what was coming.” 

Tohru hummed in what he believed to be understanding. When he looked back at her, though, he startled slightly again as he found her eyes not on the window, but rather on him. The brightening light of dawn highlighted her features, and she looked, now, somewhat upset. The determination that had lit up her eyes moments ago had been replaced with something sad and different when he hadn’t been looking. 

He hated it, but it was that look that made the strange heaviness hanging off of his ribs finally wane. 

The sadness he saw in her lasted for only a second, though, as she startled, too, at the contact. Her features drowned under a flood of blush, and she forced her gaze elsewhere — the stack of pots on the far counter, the half-opened cupboard that refused to stay closed, the collar of his shirt.

If it were any other day, he would have laughed at how familiar this was — her embarrassment, always seeming to bubble up from strange circumstances. But now there was just a nervousness tinging his insides green.

“Uh, Tohru—”

“Have you had breakfast yet?”

The words rushed out of her, past a sudden smile that didn’t quite meet her eyes. Before he could respond and say he hadn’t, she stepped back and turned away, retreating to the fridge. She began to hum a made-up tune. He could hear how high it strung in her throat, forced and odd.

Kyo sucked in a short breath and held it there. As he watched her tread around the kitchen, smiling that non-smile as she hummed, speaking to herself about ingredients and grocery lists and this and that, all while keeping her back turned to him just so, he knew he had done something wrong.

 _Maybe she knows_ , he thought to himself grimly. The tops of his ears burned. _Maybe she got freaked out._

It was quiet between the two of them as they prepared breakfast, her buzzing around like a bee trapped in an unfamiliar place, him finishing the dishes and trying not to let his thoughts wander. He sat with her at the table, where she forced her voice over the awkward air that had formed, telling him about the day prior where she met what seemed to be Arisa’s doppelganger, and how her newest coworker was a seriously talented breadmaker from some towns over. He told her about what his students were learning, and he eased as she clapped her hands once in excitement. 

“That’s amazing! They seem to be working hard.”

He smiled at her, soft, as the light seemed to return to her eyes in full force. 

“Yeah,” he said, “I think they’d like you.”

When he left for the dojo and kissed her goodbye at their front door, her fingers lingered on his cheek for a moment longer than usual. Her eyes seemed to search his before they softened again.

“Be safe,” she said.

“Don’t worry,” he told her. “I’ll get home before it starts raining too much.”

As he departed, he squeezed her fingers goodbye. She smiled again, and he felt her eyes on his back until he disappeared from her sight, far down the road.

Underneath the sunrise, the pink skies now giving way to the usual blue, he walked. He walked, he wondered, and he worried.

—

It hadn’t been the first time he felt that way around her.

There had been hints of it just a couple years ago, when they still lived in that house together in the forest. Every now and then, a quick flame would burn in him — laying in his room and suddenly thinking of her unprompted, or worse yet when he sat at the low table, where she would at times accidentally brush against his arm, or ask him a question in some indeterminable way that sent him soaring. The flame would spark, and, embarrassed and ashamed, he would smother it before he let it truly burn. 

He would be lying if he said he wasn’t still a little embarrassed about it even now. The biology of it all was easy enough to understand, and yet he had spent so much time denying it that it just made him aggravated, fueled by a noxious pit of fear spun since the day he tied her name to her face. Fear, because whenever those little fires bloomed somewhere in his core, he quickly had to unfold his wet blanket of guilt to kill the blaze. How dare he think of her like _that_ when it was already a particular hell just having her _near_ him? Having her so intimately intertwined in his life, while she lie none the wiser? 

(And then there was the thing orbiting that pit of fear: a seedling, born from him falling in love with her, so stupidly, so uncarefully, so quickly. When the fear tried to smother that, too, they instead orbited each other in an unceasing chase, twisting in him until the day she spoke into being the truth of her own heart, forcing them to collide. A chrysanthemum bloomed over his chest and into his blood; the fear tried to tear out its petals, but there were too many. That flower, precious and dear, and so, so very much _her,_ was impervious in its sweetness.)

But the first time he felt it not as a sudden flame, but as a slow-moving and weighty power, something more akin to lava creeping over an unsuspecting town, was after his guilt had been eased by her careful hand. It happened some months ago, in their new home, on a chilled April morning.

It had been their first month living in the mountains. They had barely started to gain their bearings, treading on water rather than dipping below it. Tohru had just started her second job. He had been spending as many of his waking hours as he could at the dojo, from the pitch black of morning to after the sun started slipping under the horizon. In the beginning, the only time they saw each other was in the quiet moments of evening, where they were both almost too tired to speak, and in the mornings, when Tohru would scamper half-awake out of bed just to see him off and kiss him goodbye.

The morning that he had seen her rush to get ready was, for the most part, an accident.

He had been told to come to the dojo a little later by Osamu- _san_ , the dojo’s owner. At first he was given vague reasons that he suspected were lies, until Osamu told him bluntly that he had been pushing himself too hard, when it was clear he had been under the weather for some days. It was something that Kazuma had apparently warned him about before Kyo started working as his assistant. 

“Kazuma can sense these things from miles away,” the elder man had told him, letting a small smile grace him as he added, “This, I’m sure you know.”

He did. And so, as his alarm went off as it usually did, he reluctantly remained in bed. Rubbed his bleary eyes, forced them closed again, only to open them a moment later when he felt that sleep wouldn’t take him back. He felt the weightiness in his face as a cold settled in him. He wove quiet curses at his sore sinuses, the weariness muddying his thoughts. 

Despite the low fever that made him ache, for some time, he just stared at the darkness through the window, listening for the morning birds. At first he wondered what kind they were, if they were different from the ones back home, until he was distracted again by the urge to get ready and leave. 

_I don’t need the sleep,_ he had thought. His foot bobbing restlessly under the blanket had been the smallest indicator of that. _I shouldn’t just waste time, I should go. I can’t afford to..._

He started to push himself up until, behind him, a sleepy sigh paused his thoughts. Tohru shifted in her sleep and turned to press against his back, where he felt the little chill in her nose press through his shirt. He felt her breathe slow. He realized, then, that she was probably a little cold, and after a moment of bargaining, he settled again to let her find him. Under the blanket, her arm crept over his middle. He reached up to lay a gentle hand on top of her’s. 

_Oh._

How quickly she eased him, he thought. And how much he had missed this. 

He closed his eyes, trying to match the rhythm of her breathing and accept the calm. _Jesus._ He squeezed her hand lightly, thinking how delicate and small it was under his. _I can’t believe I almost wasted…_

When he next woke, it was to the sound of Tohru yelping and stumbling out of bed. 

“Oh _shoot,_ I’m late!” 

He shot up suddenly himself, feeling a surge of panic seize him as he took in the unfamiliarity of seeing the bedroom basked in daylight. Then, a wooziness settled in the forefront of his head as his sinuses battled the sudden movement. He tore the blanket from him despite the daze, and looked at the time — quarter after eight.

“Shit,” he said. He passed a hand through his hair as he stood, untangling his bedhead with impatient fingers. “Tohru, I’ll—”

As he turned to face her, he was met square with her shifting her nightshirt off her arms. Eyes downcast, hair tangled, cheeks ruddy from the chill. 

The mid-morning cast her in a light he hadn’t seen in a desperately long time. 

In retrospect, it was a nothing moment. She changed in such a rush that she had managed to get her bra and a fresh blouse on in fifteen seconds flat. She walked as she slipped a skirt over her bare legs, fumbled over fastening the buttons on her way out the bedroom door. Though she disappeared in less than a minute, Kyo was left standing there for much longer. 

There, for the first time, he felt that heavy warmth edge under his ribs. Seemingly harmless. Slow-moving and careful as it crept through him not with a fever, but with want.

He stood there holding his breath, unmoving. Dust particles continued to float and swirl in the space she had briefly occupied. He watched them until they eventually settled. 

It hadn’t even been the first time she had changed in front of him. But, he supposed, it was the first time he hadn’t looked away. 

The warmth he felt was unlike other times; in the past, he had been able to grit his teeth and force it away, as though stomping it out under his heel. Now, though, as he tried to do the same, recognizing suddenly what it was, it instead sank deeper. It was dense, as though something the size of his hand that weighed the world. And as it slipped down lower yet, he reached up to roughly scrub at his eyes.

 _Knock it off,_ he hissed. _Fucking pervert._

He finally moved when he heard a clatter from down the hall, followed by Tohru slamming a door open and hurriedly apologizing to it. As he walked past their armoire, still feeling as though everything was strange and slow, he noticed the thick black stockings still folded neatly in the drawer left half-open. He picked them up and closed the drawer with his hip; he had told her to put them in a spot where she would see them after the last time she forgot to wear them. When she had returned home that night, he had to rub the tinge of purple out of her legs.

 _Stop._ He forced the memory aside, afraid of where it would lead. _Be normal._

When he found her, sitting at the dining table with a half-empty glass of orange juice, fretting over a loose thread in the hem of her skirt, he said her name and held the stockings out to her. She looked up, first at his hand and then at him, and looked surprised. But whether it was because she hadn’t realized her legs were covered in goosebumps, or because she didn’t realize that he was still home, he wasn’t sure. Thinking that it was probably the latter, though, made him feel even more sick. _No better than if I had been spying on her from outside the window_.

She had no time for questioning, though, and while he knew it pained her not to ask why he was home, and if he was okay, and if he was sick, she forced a nervous smile and a thank-you. In another few minutes, after she had tugged on the hosiery and given him a chaste kiss goodbye (which he quietly misdirected to his cheek, not risking her getting sick, too), she was gone. And again, he stood there alone, looking in the empty space in the doorway where she had just been. Still feeling the leaden weight warp his insides as his mind continued to wander back to that brief moment in the bedroom. 

On the table, Tohru had left her glass of juice unfinished. He downed the rest of it and let the sugary tang sting him. Then, despite the early-spring chill permeating the house, he took a long, cold shower. _For the fever,_ he reasoned. 

He had never been a good liar.

—

The rain had already started by the time Kyo returned home some hours later, just before the afternoon set in. As he walked past the garden, the peonies bending as the winds started to strengthen, he reached up to shake some of the dampness from his hair. When he reached out to unlock the front door, though, he paused. 

He wasn’t bothered so much by the rain anymore. But the awkward, heavy air that he had left behind this morning… that had been difficult to bear. He wondered if it had cleared while he was gone, but a sudden pang struck him as he realized that, even if that were the case, she had remained in the thick of it. Even if she had popped out to run errands, or visit the neighbors, that weight had been left on her shoulders to bear without any explanation of his own to ease her thoughts.

_Shit. I left her here to deal with it alone._

He breathed out a heavy sigh. Selfish, was what it was. He knew that she felt how the air hung that morning, and he knew how she took these things. Maybe she thought he had left because of it, and in turn, because of _her_. Maybe she had been twisting that thought like a cobweb all day, and was left with the intricate design that he was angry with her, or worse, suddenly hated her. He had left her there to worry just because of some impulsive, childish, escapist tendency, leaving the moment he was faced with yet another situation he didn’t feel ready to confront, and now he worried that her thoughts had become tangled into something so far from the truth that it would be impossible to convince her otherwise.

 _You’re such an asshole_. Thick beads of rain began to beat down on his shoulders as the coming storm made his surroundings go grey. _Making her handle your bullshit all alone, again._

He breathed in a slow breath. Though he breathed it out in a huff, it settled him just enough to quiet his pity-party. _Shut up. Open the door, and go apologize._

So he did. He unlocked the door, held his breath, and stepped over the threshold. His sneakers squelched, but otherwise, everything seemed quiet and mum. The kitchen lights were off. As he stepped further in, taking off his shoes, he wondered if she was home at all.

“Tohru?”

His voice sounded hollow in the house. It made him nervous, and a strange knot of fear rode up under his sternum at the emptiness. He dropped his duffel bag under the coat rack and walked through the kitchen to the living room, where he peered down the hall and found the lights off in each of the rooms.

“Tohru?” he tried again. 

Then, finally, a noise. The sound of feet hitting the carpet, the door to their bedroom easing open, and then the sound of her, saying his name.

“Kyo?”

She peeked around the door at first, just the right side of her body visible. Her hair had been carefully parted and braided, hanging over her shoulder, bare from her sleeveless summer dress. Though the hallway was dim, and though he stood some ways away in the living room, he caught her eye.

 _God,_ he thought, as everything in him seemed to quiet. A snap of lightning lit up the house for a moment, before it passed and everything dimmed back to that easy grey. _She’s so…_

The following thunderclap interrupted the silence in their home, striking hard enough to make the windows rattle. Tohru jumped at the noise with a small shriek, then, after peeking her head back into the bedroom a moment, exclaimed,

“It’s raining!” 

The noise had pulled him somewhat out of his quick infatuation, and he chuckled a little. “I told you it would.”

She looked at him wide-eyed, her expression somewhere between delighted and shocked, and all he could do was look at her. He became acutely aware of the fact that neither of them were really moving — just staring at each other some distance away, him taking in her features as the storm sat just overhead and made the house ever darker, looking at her as though trying to memorize her shape, as though everything were going to fade to black. She looked at him with a look he recognized, but couldn’t quite put into words. Watching him from a distance, eyes full of love, and something more.

Finally, she spoke again, a stilted stutter leaving her before she asked,

“Did you get caught in the rain?” 

The dampness on his hair and shoulders had become cold against his skin. He shrugged.

“Not really.” 

She was the first to step forward, and as she neared him, her form falling into the darkest shadows of the hallway before entering the low light of the living room just before him, soft and gentle and beautiful, he felt that weightiness again. The warmth in his heart seeped out further into his chest, overflowing until it caught his ribs, his lungs, his stomach, and just as before, it held on and grew viscous. She neared him, and as she reached out to feel the little bit of rain left on his cheek, he forced himself to stay still. He looked at her, and evened a breath.

_Alright. It’s time._

“Hey, Tohru—”

“Kyo—”

They stopped. Kyo’s brows perked, and she mirrored the expression. As another lightning strike lit the room again, he noticed the deep red of her cheeks. 

“Uh,” he stammered. Thunder rumbled the house again, and he felt it quake under his feet. “What’s up?”

She pulled her touch away from his face to wave her hands dismissively, and he watched a nervousness overtake her as she said,

“Oh, no, you go first, I interrupted—”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I did, I’m sorry, um, you go first!” As she became insistent, her shoulders began to creep up. “Please, tell me what you were going to say.”

“Woah, okay, okay, sheesh.” Despite himself, he placed his hands on her arms, quieting her movements. Holding her, he noticed the slight tremble coursing under her skin. He gave her a gentle squeeze. “Calm down.”

“Um… yes…”

He bit the inside of his cheek, looking down at her. He simultaneously wished she would have spoken first, and feared what she was thinking. As he loosened his hold on her arms, he gave them a small rub.

“Listen… about this morning,” he started, but she suddenly tensed under his hold as he said it, blurting, 

“Kyo, I’m _so_ sorry.”

“What?” His brows knit, and as she almost seemed ready to cry, he felt a panic rise in him. “Woah, hey, what? What are you sorry for?”

“Because, I…” She stopped, reaching up to tug at the end of her braid, drawing her eyes to the floor. “Sometimes, I don’t… I can be so oblivious, and…”

 _Oh, no_ , he thought. 

“Hey, no, wait, that’s not—”

“I should have recognized that I was making you uncomfortable,” she said hurriedly, at which he stopped. “And I should have stopped when you clearly didn’t want me to touch you like that, and I’m—”

“Tohru, _wait_.” 

She looked up at him, and he couldn’t form the words for a moment. Made _him_ uncomfortable? Why would she have…

“I was going to apologize,” he started, squeezing her arms again, “because I made _you_ uncomfortable.”

“Huh?” 

The way her eyes sprung wider, the manner in which her upset turned quickly to confusion, almost made him wither. She began to stammer again, her hands moving nervous and erratic in the space between them, and he moved his hands to instead hold her's steady. 

“I was…” He swallowed, struggling to find the right words. “Look, first, it was stupid of me to leave this morning. And I’m sorry. I left you to deal with that by yourself, and that wasn’t fair.”

“Kyo, no, you don’t have to apologize for that—”

“Second,” he said, trying to force the words out before he could fall back into cowardice again, “I’ve just been feeling… God, I don’t know.” He paused, then sucked in a breath, and quietly said, “I… _want_ you.” 

As he at last placed the word that described the unrelenting weight on his tongue, he wanted to take it back. He felt his face and neck burn, and he rushed to say, “Which sounds stupid, because I _have_ you, but it’s different. It’s… I just… I don’t want you to feel rushed, or like you _have_ to—” 

“Kyo- _kun_ ,” Tohru tried, voice timid, but he hardly heard her as he continued, 

“—because obviously I’m not going to make you do something you don’t want, but I don’t want you to feel pressured just because _I_ want it—”

“Kyo…” 

“—and I don’t want to make you uncomfortable with me feeling like that, but I also feel like I’m hurting your feelings by, I don’t know, pulling back, and I just want to say I’m sorry. I love you, and I’m sorry for—”

Finally, she forced him to be silent, as she pressed herself up on her toes and kissed him. She squeezed his hands, which had been desperately clinging to her’s as he rambled, before moving to touch his arms, his shoulders, his cheeks. He stood stunned. As she pulled away, he realized he hadn’t even kissed her back.

“ _Kyo,_ ” she pressed, and he watched as she smiled despite the tears lining her eyes. “It’s okay!” 

“It’s ‘okay?’” he repeated dumbly.

“Yes, I…” She ran her thumbs along his cheekbones, failing to suppress a laugh as she said, “I was apologizing for the same thing.”

And that did it in for her. As she let herself laugh, cheeks red and shoulders shaking as her nerves spilled out and dissipated, Kyo could do nothing but stare at her. The nervous knot that had threatened to choke him seemed to both intensify and ease away. 

_The same thing? So she was…_

“Tohru,” he said, and she managed a small ‘uh huh?’ through her giggles. “You mean you were… You were trying to…”

His hands, then, started to fall to settle on her waist in staggered movements. Shy, as though he were touching her there for the first time. Her hands, too, moved, from his face to his shoulders, and she quelled her laughter to instead smile brightly at him. It was all the answer he needed.

“It’s okay,” she repeated. “It’s okay. I want you, too.”

And, like a wax seal on an ancient letter, she pressed another kiss to his mouth. She squeezed his shoulders, and he sank into her touch as he kissed her in return. Tentative, he deepened their kiss, and she welcomed it. He felt her slide a hand to his neck, her fingers lacing through the hair she could reach, and she pressed her fingertips just so in the notch of his atlas.

_It’s okay._

It sank in him, a dense pool of warmth and wanting, low in his belly, and finally, he let it. He let it as he squeezed her waist, as he brought a hand up to cup the back of her head, as he invited her to press flush against him. The storm poured loud and intense against their rooftop, but there, he only heard the beat of his heart grow fast and loud in his ears. Though another clap of thunder made the air quake, he only felt her heart beating frantic against his chest, her skin as he edged the straps of her dress off her shoulders, her hands as she slid them under his shirt, the twitch of her mouth as she couldn’t help but smile into him. 

_I love you,_ he thought desperately. He thought it as they stumbled down the hallway, twisting in an awkward waltz as they refused to part, and he found himself thinking of little else. She breathed his name, and her’s framed his thoughts as he struggled to speak. 

_Tohru._

They fell into their bedroom, and the rain battered loud against their window. They fell upon their bed, where they permitted their hands to roam, bold and timid, with fingertips and palms.

_Tohru, Tohru, Tohru._

He parted from her mouth to regain a breath, and as he looked into her eyes, she smiled at him. Flushed, beaming, loving and wanting, and wanting _him_. And God, he thought, she was beautiful. She was always so, so beautiful.

 _I love you,_ he thought, feeling himself smile as he started kissing her again, needy and, at last, weightless. 

_[I love you, I love you, I love you.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-B5yr2zyY0) _

**Author's Note:**

> these two make me cry, i swear. this one took a while to get through, but i'm glad i finished it :') i hope you enjoyed! 
> 
> title is from mitski's "pink in the night," which is linked in the last line.
> 
> thank you el (machi-kuragi @ tumblr) for being my beta for the first part of this!! love u
> 
> hmu @ yunsoh.tumblr.com


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